Last updated Friday August 24, 1378

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The aim of this course will be to read a variety of texts from the English
Middle Ages and Renaissance with a view to assessing their role in the development of Western
literary art. We'll consider various critical perspectives in examining a number of genres and modes,
including Anglo-Saxon alliterative poetry, the medieval romance, lyric, political commentary,
and the drama.

CHAUCERNota bene: You will notice that we will not be reading any of Chaucer's poems in this course.
Chaucer is the subject of another entire course (English 483), so I find it best to leave him out
of 370 so we can focus on other worthy texts. Nevertheless, I have retained these research aids,
since we can quite often come to an understanding about less-famous medieval authors by working
through material on the more celebrated ones like Chaucer.

Studies
in the Age of Chaucer BibliographyA colossal endeavor by Prof. Mark Allen of UTSA; this is one of the most
useful tools available for the study of Chaucer, a searchable, annotated
bibliography of every book and article written about Chaucer for the last
several years. It will eventually go back about 25 years. The annotations
are excellent and will give you a good idea whether or not you need to look
at the work.

This bibliography is now available on a website, "fully searchable and web-friendly" indeed.

Chaucer
Review: Annotated & Indexed Biblio
"Annotated and Indexed Bibliography of the first 30 years of The
Chaucer Review. From "Abraham" to "Zitter," scholars
have published nearly 800 articles in the first 30 volumes of the premier
Chaucer journal, and they are all listed and summarized here. The subject
index is searchable using the Find function of your browser, and you can
use the article numbers there to find the essays you want in the bibliography.
For example, if you go to the index and search for "anti-Semitism,"
you will find eight entries, numbered 19, 139, 268, 279, 324, 377, 747,
798. In the bibliography, search for 268, and you will find Frank, Hardy
Long, "Seeing the Prioress Whole." 25 (1991): 229-37 with a summary
of his argument. The bibliography is a large file and takes a while to load,
but it is a great resource." (thanks to Alan Baragona for this description).

The Essential
Chaucer (1900-1984)
The site describes itself in this fashion: "The Essential Chaucer
is a selective, annotated bibliography of Chaucer studies from 1900-1984.
It was first published in 1987 by G. K. Hall and Mansell Publishers Limited.
The bibliography is divided into almost 90 topics, including themes, techniques,
and individual works by Chaucer."

The Chaucer MetaPage
The central site for anything to do with Chaucer. Prof. Hanly is a participant in the
MetaPage project.

The Cotton
Nero A X Project Have a look: a fascinating project directed by the brilliant Murray
McGillivray regarding the Gawain manuscript at the British Library (Cotton Nero A.x). They
have so far only transcribed Pearl, but will complete the whole manuscript--in their
words, "The goals of the project are first of all to make available high-quality digital photographs
of the entire manuscript; second to transcribe the entire manuscript at the highest possible level
of accuracy and detail; and finally to produce editions of each of the individual poems in which
the digital facsimiles and the new transcriptions serve as a basis for a hypertextually-linked
standard reading text with glossary, full textual and explanatory notes, and other multimedia
supports for readers." Fantastic.

The Sir Philip Sidney World Bibliography
This is the largest collection of bibliographic references on Sidney in existence. It includes all
the items originally published in Sir Philip Sidney: An Annotated Bibliography of Texts and Criticism,
1554-1984 (New York: G.K. Hall, Macmillan 1994) as well updates from 1985 to the present.